Before Eng. Mohamed Ibrahim Abouhamida founded EL EMAN General Contracting & Surveying Office in December 2021, he spent years on site with different offices and contractors. Each stage added a specific skill, and those skills are what the office relies on today. This article walks through the founder's career step by step and what he took from each stage.
First stage: Micro Engo, Alexandria (January 2015 – January 2017)
The journey began in Alexandria with Micro Engo. This was a practical school in the basics: surveying and setting out on site, and following construction day by day. Projects he worked on include:
- Grand View compound, Smouha: survey and structural work for the foundation stage.
- Roads in El Alamein and Borg El Arab: road cutting, setting out and grid survey of the alignments.
- Sugar factory, Minya Governorate: layout and construction surveying for the factory facilities.
What this stage added: variety. Working on a residential building, a road and a factory in the same period teaches an engineer that each type of project has its own way of setting out and checking, and that one wrong point can be very expensive.
Second stage: Kharafi National, Egypt (November 2019 – January 2021)
He then joined Kharafi National, one of the major infrastructure contractors. The main project was Sarai compound in New Cairo, covering infrastructure, roads and landscaping.
Here Eng. Mohamed Abouhamida worked in the technical office and as a quantity surveyor, a significant move from the site to the office. Quantity calculation leaves no room for rounding: every cubic metre of cut, fill or concrete becomes a cost and an invoice line.
What this stage added: an understanding of the whole project, from drawings to quantities to payment certificates, and of how a large company works with strict systems and reviews. That is why EL EMAN today offers technical office and quantity surveying alongside surveying.
Third stage: El Gharably Integrated Engineering (January 2021 – November 2021)
Just before founding the office, he worked with El Gharably Integrated Engineering on two very different projects:
- El Dabaa port site: marine survey and data processing, and survey work for the marine quay foundations.
- Wadi El Qamar bridge, Alexandria: survey and construction work and engineering setting out of the bridge elements.
What this stage added: marine survey in particular is a field few offices work in, because it needs echo sounders and experience processing depth data. That is why EL EMAN lists marine survey among its services and echo sounders among its equipment.
December 2021: founding EL EMAN
After these stages, Eng. Mohamed Abouhamida founded EL EMAN General Contracting & Surveying Office and took on its full management as founder and general manager. The office did not start from zero; it started with accumulated experience in:
- surveying and setting out for buildings, roads and factories;
- technical office work and quantity calculation at a major contractor;
- marine survey and data processing;
- bridge and infrastructure projects.
Since then, the office's team has worked on projects such as the Saint Catherine and Nuweiba substations, the Al-Fustat Gardens development, Mostakbal Misr (Zone 9) and Ras El Hekma. You can review them on our projects page.
What this career means for the office's clients
Working with EL EMAN means working with a founder who has done the roles your project will need: a site engineer setting out the grid, a technical office calculating quantities, a marine surveyor processing data. That makes communication easier, because the person reviewing your work understands both what happens on site and what happens on paper.
To learn more, visit the About page, download the company portfolio (PDF), or contact us to discuss your project.
About the author
Eng. Mohamed Ibrahim Abouhamida
Founder and general manager of EL EMAN General Contracting & Surveying Office in Sidi Gaber, Alexandria, since 2021. He oversees land surveys, setting-out, quantity surveys and contracting works, as well as surveying equipment sales, rental and calibration.
